Write The Studios

I've just added an advertisement on the side column. Firedoglake, whose new redesign is excellent, has set up a call to action where you can email the studios who put together your favorite shows and ask them to negotiate in good faith with the writers and give them the proper share of the profits which they deserve.

Here's a copy of the letter:

I cannot tell you how many hours of pleasure the creators and writers of this show have brought into our lives. It is for that reason that I write to ask you to treat those writers fairly.

The writers are asking for a fair share of internet and new media revenues--revenues you yourselves trumpet loudly. Robert Iger talks about "a billion five in digital." Sumner Redstone says, "Viacom will double its revenues this year from digital." Rupert Murdoch says the digital era holds "golden opportunities." Disney's annual report says, "The popularity of the ABC.com player adds to the Company's considerable success in monetizing its biggest hits." Les Moonves says that when five million people watch CSI on the internet, "We will get paid for it regardless... We're going to get paid no matter where you get it from." (He projected a two billion dollar profit from that show alone.) Yet the Alliance of Television and Motion Picture Producers (AMPTP), negotiating for your company, says that the internet and new media markets are still too iffy, too conjectural to give writers a fair piece of. Worse, it claims the right to stream entire movies and whole television episodes, with advertising, for "promotional" purposes, without compensating the writers for this re-use. These positions do not make common sense. (When studios and networks doesn't get paid, it's called "piracy." When the studios and networks don't pay writers, it's called "promotion.")

Please tell the AMPTP to negotiate fairly so that the television season--and my favorite show--can resume. I love watching it, but I love the idea of treating its creators and writers fairly even more.

The studios' recent hiring of Chris Lehane shows that they're looking for a protracted fight. This could be over tomorrow if the studios would simply operate in good faith and reserve a small sliver of their astronomical profits for the talented men and women who actually create the programming. And that goes for any piece of programming with a script - which includes animation, reality, nonfiction, anything.

You can write the studios here.